Finding the Next Generation of Roofing Pros

By Evelyn Witterholt. 

We spoke with industry experts about their partnership with SkillsUSA and how they are helping inspire future roofing professionals. 

For over 50 years, SkillsUSA has been helping build the future workforce by training students in the trades. Each year, they host the SkillsUSA Leadership and Skills conference and for the first time this year, they put on a commercial roofing competition. In a recent episode of Read, Listen, Watch, we spoke with Jennifer Ford-Smith, head of product management at Johns Manville and John Esbenshade, director of workforce development at National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA), about their work with SkillsUSA. 

At this year’s conference, Johns Manville and NRCA teamed up to create the first commercial roofing competition. The two decided to do this to help the future workforce spark an interest in the roofing industry. With our industry growing at a rapid rate, Jennifer told us that recruiting the younger generations is more important than ever. 

“The Associate Builders and Contractors organization estimates there's about 550,000 jobs that are going to need to be filled just in 2023 alone,” she said. “There's a lot of opportunity in our industry. There's a lot of different types of jobs, but we're just having a hard time filling them.” 

The two joined forces to raise money for the competition and they even got roofing manufacturers like TAMKO to provide materials for the conference. For the commercial roofing competition, they had students build a mockup of a low-slope roof with a perimeter edge wall, pipe flashing and welded thermoplastic. John told us that the NRCA had the students build these mockups according to their ProCertification® standards.  

“We do try to hold that standard ProCertification as being the goal for the students who are taking this on, because this is what you're eventually going to have to do to be able to be a ProCertified installer,” he said. “We're not just trying to set these students up to be good enough, we're trying to set them up to be excellent, to be leaders in their field, and so we want to hold them to the highest standard possible.” 

Check out the entire Read, Listen, Watch to learn more about SkillsUSA and finding future roofing pros.